Does Better Auth support organizations and SSO like Clerk?

Yes, through plugins. The organization plugin handles members, invitations, roles, teams and an active organization. The SSO plugin supports OIDC, OAuth2 and SAML 2.0, and the SCIM plugin accepts user and group provisioning from a directory. You configure and operate each one in your own app.

Which is easier for support impersonation, Better Auth or Clerk?

Both have native impersonation. Clerk offers it from its Dashboard or through actor tokens, with a monthly limit unless you buy an add-on. Better Auth's admin plugin provides impersonateUser and stopImpersonating for signed-in admins whose role has the impersonate permission. Neither adds approvals or read-only scope on its own.

How hard is it to migrate from Clerk to Better Auth?

Better Auth publishes a Clerk migration guide that imports users from a Clerk export, including bcrypt password hashes. The guide warns that the migration invalidates all active sessions and does not cover organizations, so plan a re-login and extra work for organization data.

Better Auth vs Clerk: Self-Hosted or Managed Auth?

Q: Is Better Auth a replacement for Clerk?

It can be, but they are different kinds of product. Better Auth is an open-source TypeScript library that runs inside your app and stores users in your own database. Clerk is a managed service that hosts your users and gives you prebuilt UI components. Choosing between them is mostly a choice about who runs and owns auth.

Q: Is Better Auth free?

The Better Auth framework is free and open source under the MIT license, with no per-user fees. Better Auth also sells an optional paid Infrastructure service for a hosted dashboard, audit logs, abuse protection, email and SMS, and self-service SSO and directory sync. You still pay for your own database and hosting.

Better Auth vs Clerk is a choice between owning your auth and renting it. Better Auth is an open-source TypeScript framework that runs inside your application and keeps users in your own database. Clerk is a managed service that hosts your users and gives you prebuilt sign-in, profile and organization components. Both can run a multi-tenant SaaS app with organizations, enterprise SSO and user impersonation.

So the real questions are operational. Who runs the auth server? Where does user data live? How much UI do you want to build? This comparison works through those questions, then covers the part most comparisons skip: how each handles support access to customer accounts.

What is the difference between Better Auth and Clerk?

Better Auth is a framework-agnostic authentication and authorization framework for TypeScript, and its introduction docs (opens in a new tab) explain that it is extended through plugins for features such as two-factor authentication, passkeys, multi-tenancy and SSO. It is released under the MIT license (opens in a new tab). Better Auth’s comparison page (opens in a new tab) says you can run it inside your app or as a standalone, self-hosted auth server. On July 7, 2026, Better Auth announced it is joining Vercel (opens in a new tab). The announcement says Vercel shares its commitment to keeping auth open source and framework-agnostic.

Clerk is a hosted auth and user management service. Your users live in Clerk, and your app uses Clerk’s SDKs, components and Backend API.

The pricing models follow from that. The Better Auth framework has no per-user fees. Better Auth also sells an optional paid Infrastructure service for a hosted dashboard, audit logs, abuse protection, email and SMS, and self-service SSO and directory sync, as its Infrastructure docs (opens in a new tab) describe. Better Auth’s pricing page (opens in a new tab) lists a free starter tier for it. Clerk’s pricing page (opens in a new tab) shows it bills on monthly retained users, with a free allowance per application, and sells B2B and administration features as add-ons.

Where does your user data live, and who runs it?

With Better Auth, users stay in your database (opens in a new tab). Its installation docs (opens in a new tab) explain that it uses a database to store users and sessions, and works with SQLite, PostgreSQL and MySQL directly, or through Drizzle, Prisma and MongoDB adapters. Your user table can sit next to your business data, joined in one query and backed up in one place.

The trade-off is that you operate it. Schema migrations, upgrades, security patches, email delivery and uptime are your responsibility. Better Auth publishes security advisories on its blog (opens in a new tab), and you need a habit of reading and applying them.

With Clerk, Clerk runs the service. You can export user data from the Dashboard at any time and keep your own database in sync with webhooks, but the source of truth is Clerk. That removes operational work, and adds a vendor dependency in the critical path of every sign-in.

Admin tooling follows the same split. Better Auth’s admin plugin (opens in a new tab) gives you APIs to create users, set roles, ban users, list and revoke sessions, and impersonate, but you build the screens. A hosted dashboard for users, organizations and sessions, plus audit logs, comes with the paid Infrastructure service (opens in a new tab). Clerk’s Dashboard covers user and organization management out of the box, with Admin Logs of your team’s own changes on its Business and Enterprise plans.

Neither is wrong. Better Auth suits a team with strong backend skills or strict data-residency requirements. Clerk suits a small team that wants to ship product, not run auth infrastructure.

How do developer experience and framework support compare?

Better Auth gives you APIs and client methods, and you build the screens. Its installation guide (opens in a new tab) lists route handlers for Next.js, Nuxt, SvelteKit, React Router, SolidStart, Hono, Cloudflare Workers, Express, Elysia, TanStack Start and Expo, and says it works with any backend that uses standard Request and Response objects. The catch is that it is TypeScript. If your main backend is Python or Go, you would run Better Auth as a standalone auth server beside it, which Better Auth supports.

Clerk gives you working UI on day one. Components handle sign-in, user profiles and organization switching. Its SDK reference (opens in a new tab) lists official SDKs for Next.js, React, Expo, TanStack React Start, React Router, Astro, Vue, Nuxt, Express, Fastify, iOS and Android, plus backend SDKs for Go, Python, Ruby, Java, PHP and C#.

If your design system demands custom auth screens anyway, Better Auth’s lack of UI costs little. If you want a polished B2B shell this week, Clerk’s components save real time.

How do organizations and roles compare?

Both have a real organization model, which is the base of most multi-tenant apps.

Better Auth’s organization plugin (opens in a new tab) manages organizations, members, invitations, roles and permissions, and an active organization on the session. Teams inside an organization are optional. Dynamic access control lets you create roles at runtime per organization, stored in your database. Because it is code in your app, you can extend the schema and hook into every step.

Clerk’s Organizations (opens in a new tab) let users belong to several organizations, with the Active Organization in each session deciding their role and permissions. Roles and permissions are defined once per application. Members join through invitations, verified email domains or enterprise connections. Unlimited members, custom roles and verified domains sit in Clerk’s paid B2B Authentication add-on.

Which handles enterprise SSO and SCIM better?

Both cover SSO and SCIM. The difference is who builds the onboarding experience.

Better Auth’s SSO plugin (opens in a new tab) supports OIDC, OAuth2 and SAML 2.0. Its SCIM plugin (opens in a new tab) adds an inbound SCIM 2.0 service, so a customer’s directory can create, update, deactivate and delete users and groups. It needs a database adapter with interactive transactions, which rules out Cloudflare D1. A self-service dashboard, where customers’ IT admins configure their own SSO, is part of the paid Infrastructure product, according to the Better Auth 1.5 announcement (opens in a new tab).

Clerk supports SAML, OIDC and EASIE connections, metered per connection on paid plans. Directory Sync (SCIM) has been generally available since April 16, 2026 (opens in a new tab). Customers’ IT admins can configure SSO from a Security tab in the <OrganizationProfile /> component, and Clerk added self-serve Directory Sync (opens in a new tab) there on September 30, 2026.

How does user impersonation work in Better Auth and Clerk?

Both support user impersonation natively, but the starting point differs. User impersonation means a staff member signs in as a customer to reproduce a problem, while the system records who is really acting.

In Better Auth, the admin plugin (opens in a new tab) provides impersonateUser and stopImpersonating. The caller must already be signed in with a role that has the impersonate permission. Impersonating other admins needs a separate impersonate-admins permission. The session lasts one hour by default, set with impersonationSessionDuration, and also ends when the browser session ends. The impersonated session row records the admin’s ID in impersonatedBy, as the admin plugin schema (opens in a new tab) shows. So your support staff need accounts and roles inside your own app.

In Clerk, a Dashboard user can choose “Impersonate user” from the Users page, or your backend can create an actor token and use its one-time sign-in URL from your own admin tool. The session token carries an act claim naming the impersonator. Clerk’s impersonation docs (opens in a new tab) say the session lasts 30 minutes by default, with a 10-minute inactivity timeout. Clerk’s pricing (opens in a new tab) lists 5 impersonations per month on every plan, with unlimited impersonations in the Enhanced Administration add-on.

Neither one decides which customers an agent may open, requires approval, or makes the session read-only. Your backend reads impersonatedBy or act and enforces that. The deep dives cover each: Better Auth impersonation for support and Clerk user impersonation for support.

Which should you choose?

Choose Better Auth if you want to own auth and keep users in your database. Choose Clerk if you want auth run for you, with UI included. The table summarizes the differences.

Area	Better Auth	Clerk
What it is	Open-source TypeScript framework (MIT)	Managed auth and user management service
Where users live	Your database	Clerk, with export and webhooks
Who operates it	You	Clerk
Cost model	No per-user fees; optional paid Infrastructure	Monthly retained users, plus add-ons
UI	You build it	Prebuilt components
Languages	TypeScript; can run as a standalone auth server	JavaScript frameworks, mobile, several backend SDKs
Organizations	Plugin with teams and runtime roles	Built in; paid add-on for advanced B2B features
SSO and SCIM	Plugins; self-service setup via paid Infrastructure	Built in; self-serve setup in components
Admin tooling	Admin plugin APIs; hosted dashboard via Infrastructure	Clerk Dashboard
Native impersonation	Admin plugin, role-based, one hour by default	Dashboard and actor tokens; monthly limit unless you buy the add-on

Choose Better Auth when

Your stack is TypeScript and you want users in your own database.
Data residency, per-user cost at scale, or vendor independence matter to you.
You are happy to build auth screens and run upgrades and security patches.
Support staff already have accounts in your app, so role-based impersonation fits.

Choose Clerk when

You want working sign-in, profile and organization UI with little code.
Your team would rather not operate auth infrastructure.
You need self-serve SSO and SCIM setup for customers without building it.
Support needs to impersonate from a dashboard without having accounts in your app.

Consider migration cost before you commit. Better Auth publishes a Clerk migration guide (opens in a new tab) that imports users from a Clerk export, including bcrypt password hashes. It warns that the move invalidates all active sessions, and it does not cover organizations. Moving the other way also means re-creating users, memberships and sessions. If you are also comparing hosted platforms, see Clerk vs Auth0.

How Devora fits with Better Auth and Clerk

Devora is not an auth provider. As the Devora overview for teams (opens in a new tab) explains, it adds the support workflow around impersonation: access requests with a reason, approval by an approver or admin in your organization, read-only or read-and-write scope, a time limit and access history, with optional recording and a backend scope guard (opens in a new tab). Your app still owns authentication, tenant authorization and revocation.

Both providers are supported, with different amounts of work, according to Devora’s auth provider docs (opens in a new tab):

Clerk is supported. Following the Devora Clerk guide (opens in a new tab), your backend creates a Clerk actor token carrying Devora’s verified context in the actor object. Your frontend completes Clerk’s ticket sign-in, and your backend reads the act claim and passes the context to Devora’s guard.
Better Auth is supported with a binding route you write. The staff member needs an existing Better Auth session with impersonation permission. After impersonateUser, your own route consumes a one-time handle and attaches Devora’s context to the impersonated session. Devora does not ship a Better Auth binding helper yet, as the Devora Better Auth guide (opens in a new tab) notes.

If native impersonation covers your needs, keep it. The build vs buy guide helps you decide what to add. If you want approvals, scoped access and access history on top, create a Devora account and try one staging session.

Better Auth vs Clerk: self-hosted library or managed auth for your SaaS?